COURIERS
FedEx sues US government
FedEx Corp is suing the US government over export rules it says are virtually impossible to follow because it handles millions of packages a day. The delivery company says most packages are sealed when customers drop them off. It compares names and addresses of shippers and recipients against a government list of groups and people who could be national security risks. FedEx sued the US Department of Commerce and US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross on Monday in federal court in Washington.
SOFTWARE
Capgemini to buy Altran
Capgemini SE said it is to acquire Altran Technologies SA for 14 euros a share to expand its software engineering network with Internet and technology companies. The total cash portion of the deal amounts to 3.6 billion euros (US$4.10 billion), excluding net debt of 1.4 billion euros, the companies said in a statement on Monday. Paris-based Capgemini is pursuing additional scale to keep up with a consolidating information technology services industry. When combined, the companies would be able to help clients adopt new solutions, Capgemini chief executive Paul Hermelin said.
GAMBLING
Bern cracks down
Switzerland is implementing one of Europe’s strictest gambling laws next week, essentially blocking foreign-based companies from the Swiss market and forcing the nation’s online gamblers to use domestic sites, Bern said on Monday. In a statement, the federal commissions in charge of gambling, lotteries and betting said they would soon publish a “blacklist” of online gambling sites that would be blocked as of Monday next week.
REAL ESTATE
Record Shenzhen land sale
A sale of five plots of residential land in Shenzhen on Monday raised 22.4 billion yuan (US$3.3 billion), a record single-day haul since the city started open land bidding in 2001. Bidding was so fierce that each plot reached the maximum price set by authorities, leaving developers to compete on how much space they would set aside for affordable housing to be transferred to the government for free. On top of that, condo buyers would be banned from flipping properties for the first three years.
INSURANCE
FWD in MetLife talks
FWD Group (富衛) is in advanced talks to buy MetLife Inc’s Hong Kong insurance unit in what would be the latest in a string of acquisitions by the insurer backed by billionaire Richard Li (李澤楷), people familiar with the matter said. The companies could reach an agreement in the next few weeks, the people said. A deal could value MetLife Hong Kong at less than US$400 million and would help FWD boost its presence in the territory, the people said. At that price, MetLife would sell the asset for less than its US$400 million embedded value, a measure of the value of its insurance contracts.
INTERNET
Apple responds to complaint
Music streaming service Spotify Technology SA pays Apple Inc a 15 percent fee on about 680,000 of its 100 million premium customers, Apple disclosed in a response to Spotify’s complaint with European antitrust regulators. Premium customers pay a monthly fee or are in a free trial of Spotify’s premium service, which is ad free. Spotify has a total of 217 million customers, including users of its free service.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to